International Men’s Day 2024
A debate on International Men's Day is scheduled to take place on Thursday 21 November 2024. The debate was scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee and will be led by Sam Rushworth MP.
This paper provides a summary of apprenticeships policy and developments in England. It also explains how apprenticeships are funded.
Apprenticeships policy in England (551 KB , PDF)
Skills and training are devolved policy areas. This briefing covers apprenticeships in England, and covers policy developments from 2017 onwards.
Apprenticeships in England are available to people over the age of 16 who work in England, and take between one and six years to complete. They are paid jobs which incorporate on and off the job training. Apprentices have the same rights as other employees and are entitled to be paid at least the apprentice rate of the national minimum wage. As of August 2024 around 850 different apprenticeships were available.
Just over 750,000 apprentices participated in an apprenticeship in the 2022-23 academic year.
Apprenticeships can be studied at different qualification levels, which each have an equivalent educational level:
Apprenticeship standards outline what an apprentice will be doing in a particular apprenticeship, and the skills that are required of them. Standards are developed by “trailblazer” groups that represent groups of employers and sector organisations, and will always include an end-point assessment.
Standards have replaced apprenticeship frameworks which have been progressively phased out since the 2017/18 academic year. Since August 2020, all new apprenticeship starts have been on standards. Frameworks were developed by sector bodies and were primarily qualification-focused.
There are various minimum standards in place to ensure that funding will be provided for an apprenticeship:
On 6 April 2017 the apprenticeship levy came into effect with all UK employers with a pay bill of over £3 million per year paying the levy. The levy is set at 0.5% of the value of the employer’s pay bill, minus an apprenticeship levy allowance of £15,000 per financial year.
The levy is paid into an apprenticeship service account, and the government applies a 10% top-up to the funds that are paid into the account. The funds in this account can only be spent on apprenticeship training and assessment, and expire 24 months after they enter the service account.
Levy-paying employers are able to transfer unused apprenticeship funds to other employers, including to those who do not pay the levy. Since April 2024, employers have been able to transfer a maximum amount of 50% of their annual funds, and can make as many transfers as they wish.
Apprenticeships are generally funded in the following way:
After the introduction of the apprenticeships levy in 2017 there was a large fall in the number of apprenticeship starts, leading to criticism of the levy and other reforms that have been put in place. The government has responded by stating that the quality of apprenticeships has improved since the reforms have been put in place.
Further concerns have continued to be raised about the levy. These concerns include that it is too complex, inflexible, that other training is being rebadged as apprenticeships and the high drop-out rates from apprenticeships.
Many groups within the apprenticeships and skills sector have called for the apprenticeship levy to be widened so that funding from the levy could also be used on non-apprenticeship training.
The apprenticeship levy is paid by all eligible employers in the UK, although some of the revenue from the levy is devolved to other countries within the UK.
The Treasury allocates an apprenticeship budget to the Department for Education to fund the apprenticeship budget in England. This pays for the training and assessment costs of both levy and non-levy paying employers, and assumes that levy-paying employers will not use all their levy funds.
There was a large underspend in the apprenticeship budget between 2017/18 and 2020/21, but most of the budget has been spent in years since 2020/21.
Apprenticeships policy in England (551 KB , PDF)
A debate on International Men's Day is scheduled to take place on Thursday 21 November 2024. The debate was scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee and will be led by Sam Rushworth MP.
A Westminster Hall debate on employment support for blind and partially sighted people is scheduled for Wednesday 20 November 2024, from 9:30-11:00am. The debate will be led by Marsha De Cordova MP (Labour, Battersea).
Unemployment: International Comparisons: Data on harmonised unemployment rates for major international economies.